SUNDERLAND — David Raya was still standing at his goal line, hands on his hips, when Bruno Guimaraes picked up the ball seconds later and made the point definitive. Two minutes, two moments, and Arsenal’s place atop the Premier League was settled for another week.
The Brazil midfielder, who spent five seasons building his reputation at Newcastle United before Arsenal paid north of £60 million to bring him south in July, had been serenaded with boos from the moment he stepped off the substitutes’ bench at half-time at the Stadium of Light. He answered in the 58th minute with the kind of finish that renders all arguments irrelevant — a top-corner curler from 23 yards, driven with the outside of his right boot, that the home crowd tracked in silence before it disappeared into the net. Guimaraes cupped both ears in the direction of the Sunderland supporters and ran toward the corner flag.
The sequence that produced it had been even more dramatic. Sunderland midfielder Enzo Le Fée stepped up to convert a penalty in the 56th minute, the pressure of the crowd behind him, and Raya flung himself left to palm the ball away from the post. The save — Raya’s third penalty stop in competitive football this calendar year, according to Sky Sports — kept the score goalless and the momentum with Arsenal. Guimaraes’ goal, arriving two minutes later while Sunderland were still absorbing the blow, all but ended the contest. Bukayo Saka added the second from the spot in the seventh minute of stoppage time after Sunderland’s Reinildo Mandava was sent off for a foul on the England forward inside the box.
Arsenal are four from four. Twelve points, the Premier League’s only side yet to drop a point. The defending champions — who opened the season with a 3-0 statement win over Manchester City in the Community Shield — have constructed victories in different ways each week, suggesting a squad deep enough to solve problems as they arrive.
Whether this early perfection extends through thirty-four more games is a question the fixture list will eventually answer.
Elsewhere across the Saturday schedule, the results drew a sharper divide between the league’s contenders and its early challengers. Liverpool drew goalless with Fulham at Anfield in a result that surprised more than the score suggested. Manager Andoni Iraola had celebrated a midweek Champions League group-stage win over Atlético Madrid, and conceded afterward that his side had “lacked freshness.” The £100 million-plus attacking combination of Bradley Barcola, Florian Wirtz, and Alexander Isak — assembled over two transfer windows — offered little against a Fulham side organised to absorb and counter. Liverpool have five points from four games, their title credentials still unconfirmed.
Chelsea endured the most chaotic afternoon. Xabi Alonso’s side took an early lead through Morgan Rogers, but newly promoted Hull City—third in the table and still unbeaten—responded with two Mohamed Belloumi goals in the 28th and 34th minutes to lead at halftime. João Pedro’s 66th-minute equaliser brought Chelsea level, and the score remained 2-2.
Hull sit third with six points from four matches—a sentence written in September about a club promoted through the Championship playoffs in May that requires little further explanation.
Nottingham Forest took three points from Aston Villa, while Ipswich Town’s 3-2 victory over Crystal Palace continued to suggest that this season’s promoted teams were not assembled merely to survive.
Arsenal face their first serious examination in the coming weeks: trips to Manchester City and Bayern Munich in Europe, followed by a visit to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. They enter that stretch on a foundation that has proved difficult to unsettle.
The question their rivals are quietly considering is whether the signing of Bruno Guimarães—whose understated arrival contrasted with a summer of louder transfers—represents the final piece that makes Arsenal structurally different from the team that won the title in May.
Guimarães celebrated in the Sunderland end as though he already knew the answer. Whether the season proves him right will depend on what happens from the second month through the ninth.
